mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Transformers in Remote Sensing: A Survey

arXiv 2209.01206 ↗First posted 2 Sep 2022cs.CVcited by 61

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Abstract (arXiv)

Deep learning-based algorithms have seen a massive popularity in different areas of remote sensing image analysis over the past decade. Recently, transformers-based architectures, originally introduced in natural language processing, have pervaded computer vision field where the self-attention mechanism has been utilized as a replacement to the popular convolution operator for capturing long-range dependencies. Inspired by recent advances in computer vision, remote sensing community has also witnessed an increased exploration of vision transformers for a diverse set of tasks. Although a number of surveys have focused on transformers in computer vision in general, to the best of our knowledge we are the first to present a systematic review of recent advances based on transformers in remote sensing. Our survey covers more than 60 recent transformers-based methods for different remote sensing problems in sub-areas of remote sensing: very high-resolution (VHR), hyperspectral (HSI) and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery. We conclude the survey by discussing different challenges and open issues of transformers in remote sensing. Additionally, we intend to frequently update and maintain the latest transformers in remote sensing papers with their respective code at: https://github.com/VIROBO-15/Transformer-in-Remote-Sensing

Key facts. Cited by 61 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 51 of its 147 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 2 Sep 2022.

Builds on

51 of 147 references.

References · 51

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2015Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognitioncited by 51,809
  3. 2020An Image is Worth 16x16 Words: Transformers for Image Recognition at Scalecited by 29,915
  4. 2014Very Deep Convolutional Networks for Large-Scale Image Recognitioncited by 15,267
  5. 2021Swin Transformer: Hierarchical Vision Transformer using Shifted Windowscited by 12,082
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38 more
  1. 2018MegaDepth: Learning Single-View Depth Prediction from Internet Photoscited by 731
  2. 2021MobileViT: Light-weight, General-purpose, and Mobile-friendly Vision Transformercited by 636
  3. 2017DOTA: A Large-scale Dataset for Object Detection in Aerial Imagescited by 622
  4. 2021CSWin Transformer: A General Vision Transformer Backbone with Cross-Shaped Windowscited by 526
  5. 2021MViTv2: Improved Multiscale Vision Transformers for Classification and Detectioncited by 516
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  9. 2019Object Detection in Optical Remote Sensing Images: A Survey and A New Benchmarkcited by 339
  10. 2018Fully Convolutional Siamese Networks for Change Detectioncited by 305
  11. 2021Remote Sensing Image Change Detection with Transformerscited by 305
  12. 2022How Do Vision Transformers Work?cited by 305
  13. 2022Transformers in Medical Imaging: A Surveycited by 245
  14. 2017Exploring Models and Data for Remote Sensing Image Caption Generationcited by 195
  15. 2019iSAID: A Large-scale Dataset for Instance Segmentation in Aerial Imagescited by 195
  16. 2021SpectralFormer: Rethinking Hyperspectral Image Classification with Transformerscited by 168
  17. 2017Total-Text: A Comprehensive Dataset for Scene Text Detection and Recognitioncited by 161
  18. 2017Deep learning in remote sensing: a reviewcited by 128
  19. 2018Urban Change Detection for Multispectral Earth Observation Using Convolutional Neural Networkscited by 108
  20. 2022An Empirical Study of Remote Sensing Pretrainingcited by 105
  21. 2021Oriented RepPoints for Aerial Object Detectioncited by 102
  22. 2017Detecting Curve Text in the Wild: New Dataset and New Solutioncited by 82
  23. 2021S2Looking: A Satellite Side-Looking Dataset for Building Change Detectioncited by 77
  24. 2020DASNet: Dual attentive fully convolutional siamese networks for change detection of high resolution satellite imagescited by 75
  25. 2020Dynamic Refinement Network for Oriented and Densely Packed Object Detectioncited by 72
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  27. 2022Video Transformers: A Surveycited by 63
  28. 2022Multimodal Fusion Transformer for Remote Sensing Image Classificationcited by 61
  29. 2022AO2-DETR: Arbitrary-Oriented Object Detection Transformercited by 55
  30. 2022HyperTransformer: A Textural and Spectral Feature Fusion Transformer for Pansharpeningcited by 32
  31. 2021A survey of active learning algorithms for supervised remote sensing image classificationcited by 27
  32. 2013Advances in Hyperspectral Image Classification: Earth monitoring with statistical learning methodscited by 26
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  36. 2019Super-Resolution of PROBA-V Images Using Convolutional Neural Networkscited by 17
  37. 2022Transformer-based SAR Image Despecklingcited by 15
  38. 2022Point RCNN: An Angle-Free Framework for Rotated Object Detectioncited by 6

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2023: 13; 2024: 18; 2025: 20; 2026: 10.

61 papers.

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  1. 2023Foundation Models for Generalist Geospatial Artificial Intelligencecited by 143
  2. 2023The Segment Anything Model (SAM) for Remote Sensing Applications: From Zero to One Shotcited by 83
  3. 2024Rethinking Transformers Pre-training for Multi-Spectral Satellite Imagerycited by 82
  4. 2023CMID: A Unified Self-Supervised Learning Framework for Remote Sensing Image Understandingcited by 48
  5. 2023Transformers in Speech Processing: A Surveycited by 38
  6. 2023A survey of the Vision Transformers and their CNN-Transformer based Variantscited by 33
  7. 2023Remote Sensing Change Detection With Transformers Trained from Scratchcited by 22
  8. 2024Remote Sensing SpatioTemporal Vision-Language Models: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 22
  9. 2025Primus: Enforcing Attention Usage for 3D Medical Image Segmentationcited by 22
  10. 2024ELGC-Net: Efficient Local-Global Context Aggregation for Remote Sensing Change Detectioncited by 19
  11. 2023Transformers in Healthcare: A Surveycited by 17
  12. 2024MTKD: Multi-Teacher Knowledge Distillation for Image Super-Resolutioncited by 17
38 more
  1. 2024HSIMamba: Hyperpsectral Imaging Efficient Feature Learning with Bidirectional State Space for Classificationcited by 14
  2. 2024RSBuilding: Towards General Remote Sensing Image Building Extraction and Change Detection with Foundation Modelcited by 12
  3. 2023The Potential of Visual ChatGPT For Remote Sensingcited by 10
  4. 2024Image Fusion in Remote Sensing: An Overview and Meta Analysiscited by 10
  5. 2024Semi-supervised Open-World Object Detectioncited by 10
  6. 2023GlobalMind: Global Multi-head Interactive Self-attention Network for Hyperspectral Change Detectioncited by 9
  7. 2023Which Transformer to Favor: A Comparative Analysis of Efficiency in Vision Transformerscited by 9
  8. 2026Dual-Branch Remote Sensing Infrared Image Super-Resolutioncited by 7
  9. 2025Probabilistic Machine Learning for Noisy Labels in Earth Observationcited by 6
  10. 2025Vision Mamba in Remote Sensing: A Comprehensive Survey of Techniques, Applications and Outlookcited by 6
  11. 2023Video Instance Segmentation in an Open-Worldcited by 5
  12. 2024LMFNet: An Efficient Multimodal Fusion Approach for Semantic Segmentation in High-Resolution Remote Sensingcited by 4
  13. 2024Deep Learning for Economistscited by 4
  14. 2024ViewDelta: Scaling Scene Change Detection through Text-Conditioningcited by 4
  15. 2023Locality-Aware Hyperspectral Classificationcited by 3
  16. 2023Terrain-Informed Self-Supervised Learning: Enhancing Building Footprint Extraction from LiDAR Data with Limited Annotationscited by 2
  17. 2024Tuning a SAM-Based Model with Multi-Cognitive Visual Adapter to Remote Sensing Instance Segmentationcited by 2
  18. 2025A Decade of Deep Learning for Remote Sensing Spatiotemporal Fusion: Advances, Challenges, and Opportunitiescited by 2
  19. 2025Diffusion Models for Hyperspectral Image Analysis: A Comprehensive Reviewcited by 2
  20. 2026Multi-Modal Landslide Detection from Sentinel-1 SAR and Sentinel-2 Optical Imagery Using Multi-Encoder Vision Transformers and Ensemble Learningcited by 2
  21. 2024CMTNet: Convolutional Meets Transformer Network for Hyperspectral Images Classificationcited by 1
  22. 2024On Vision Transformers for Classification Tasks in Side-Scan Sonar Imagerycited by 1
  23. 2025Kolmogorov-Arnold Network for Remote Sensing Image Semantic Segmentationcited by 1
  24. 2025HyRet-Change: A hybrid retentive network for remote sensing change detectioncited by 1
  25. 2025HyperTTA: Test-Time Adaptation for Hyperspectral Image Classification under Distribution Shiftscited by 1
  26. 2025Mapping and Classification of Trees Outside Forests using Deep Learningcited by 1
  27. 2025Toward Stable Semi-Supervised Remote Sensing Segmentation via Co-Guidance and Co-Fusioncited by 1
  28. 2026Overhead Wildlife Locator (OWL): Benchmarking Weakly Supervised Learning for Aerial Wildlife Surveyscited by 1
  29. 2024StrideNET: Swin Transformer for Terrain Recognition with Dynamic Roughness Extractioncited by 0
  30. 2024Comparing Deep Learning Models for Rice Mapping in Bhutan Using High Resolution Satellite Imagerycited by 0
  31. 2024COMFORT: A Continual Fine-Tuning Framework for Foundation Models Targeted at Consumer Healthcarecited by 0
  32. 2024A Data-Driven Review of Remote Sensing-Based Data Fusion in Precision Agriculture from Foundational to Transformer-Based Techniquescited by 0
  33. 2025ChromaFormer: A Scalable and Accurate Transformer Architecture for Land Cover Classificationcited by 0
  34. 2025RSRWKV: A Linear-Complexity 2D Attention Mechanism for Efficient Remote Sensing Vision Taskcited by 0
  35. 2025Optimal Hyperspectral Undersampling Strategy for Satellite Imagingcited by 0
  36. 2025AutoGEEval: A Multimodal and Automated Framework for Geospatial Code Generation on GEE with Large Language Modelscited by 0
  37. 2025Deformable Attention Mechanisms Applied to Object Detection, case of Remote Sensingcited by 0
  38. 2025DFYP: A Dynamic Fusion Framework with Spectral Channel Attention and Adaptive Operator learning for Crop Yield Predictioncited by 0

50 most cited of 61 All 61 (JSON)